US abuse worse than Saddam's, say inmates
By Scott Wilson in Baghdad
May 4, 2004
Day and night lost meaning soon after Muwafaq Sami Abbas, a lawyer,
arrived at Baghdad airport for an unexpected stay.
In March he was seized from his bed by US troops in the middle of the
night, he said, along with the rest of the men in his house, and taken
to a prison on the airport grounds.
The black sack the troops placed over his head was removed only
briefly during the next nine days of interrogation, conducted by US
officials in civilian and military clothes, he said. He was forced to
do knee bends until he collapsed, he recalled, and black marks still
ring his wrists from the pinch of plastic handcuffs. Rest was made
impossible by loudspeakers blaring, over and over, the Beastie Boys'
rap anthem No Sleep 'Til Brooklyn.
The forced exercise was even harder for his father, 57, a former army
general who held a signed certificate from the US occupation authority
vouching for his "high level of co-operation and assistance" in the
days after the war.
Father and son are now free, but Mr Abbas said his three brothers were
still inside Abu Ghraib prison.
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"The savagery the Americans have practised against the Iraqis, well,
now we have seen it, touched it and felt it," he said. "These types of
actions will grow more hostile forces against the coalition, and this
is the reason for the resistance."
The photographs of US soldiers abusing Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib
have reinforced the long-held view that the US occupation is intent on
humiliating the Iraqi people.
Other Iraqis have given similar accounts of what goes on inside the
prison that was a centre of torture and execution under Saddam
Hussein's rule.
Dhia al-Shweiri spent several stints in the prison, twice under Saddam
and once under the Americans. He preferred Saddam's torture to the
humiliation of being stripped naked by his US guards, he said. Now Mr
Shweiri, 30, is a diehard fighter in the Mehdi Army, the anti-US
militia of a Shiite Muslim imam
Mr Shweiri said that while jailed by Saddam's regime he was
electrocuted, beaten and suspended from the ceiling with his hands
tied behind his back.
"But that's better than the humiliation of being stripped naked," he
said. "Shoot me here," he added, pointing between his eyes, "but don't
do this to us."
The US military said last week "no more than 20" US soldiers had been
involved in abusing and humiliating inmates. The vast majority of US
guards were not involved, Brigadier-General Mark Kimmitt said.
However, on Sunday Abu Salem, who was detained inside Abu Ghraib for
six months until February, said abuse by US guards went on all the
time.
Mr Salem said he had been in the jail shortly before a visit from the
International Red Cross in January. Until then, detainees had been
kept naked. "The night before the Red Cross arrived, the US soldiers
gave them [the prisoners] some new clothes. They told us that if we
complained to the Red Cross about our treatment we would be kept in
prison for ever."
An article by a writer for New Yorker magazine, Seymour Hersh, at the
weekend detailed a report that US Major-General Antonio Taguba wrote
in February that accused soldiers from the 372nd Military Police
Company of "sadistic" treatment of Iraqi prisoners. The US has
appointed a former senior officer of the Iraqi armed forces to take
over command of an Iraqi force in Falluja, a US military official said
yesterday. Mohammed Latif would lead the Falluja Brigade, subject to
background checks.
Major-General Jassim Mohammed Saleh, a commander in Saddam Hussein's
Republican Guard who was appointed to lead the force last Friday, may
continue to lead its 1st Battalion, the official said.
The Washington Post, Associated Press, The Guardian, The Baltimore Sun
.
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